A Crimson Snowflake
by SavvyEnigma
Summary: Family. Love. A home. Something she always wanted. She never thought she would find it in a group of alien robots, who had come with intentions to destroy Earth. And they never thought that a mere human would mean so much to them, until they nearly lost her.
1. Chapter 1

Snowflake wiped angry tears from her eyes as she walked. Today had been one of the worst schooldays in her life—and that was saying something. The normal insults of "freak" and "reject" had escalated, until over a dozen kids were insulting and spitting at her. Snowflake was an albino, and her red eyes—the color was actually a shade of red, and not pink—made her shunned by even the nerds and freaks in her school and neighborhood. She was what might be considered pretty, with delicately shaped features, slightly pointed ears, and hair down to her mid back. However, since her skin was nearly as pale as her hair, she got sunburned easily and had to remain covered all year round. She wore long jeans, turtlenecks, long sleeved shirts, and hoodies—most of her clothes came from thrift stores, but occasionally she would find a large enough piece of cloth, like a curtain or table cloth, and make her own clothes. She was smart, mostly getting one hundred percent in all of her tests, but her foster parents didn't care. They'd only taken her in because of the money the government gave.

Taking a deep breath, she paused by a fence that blocked off a construction site and glanced around. No one watching, no one hanging around the construction equipment either, they'd quit for the day. Perfect. Shouldering her knapsack, she scrambled over the fence, dropping down to the other side. Making her way over to a concrete mixer truck, she sat cross-legged against one of the wheels and pulled a wide, ornately carved and decorated box from her knapsack. It fit perfectly in her lap. Opening it, she smiled at the contents. To anyone else, the bits and pieces of paper and the scissors lying inside wouldn't mean anything other than paper and scissors. To her, it meant escape. Selecting a larger piece of scrap booking paper, she took the scissors and began folding and cutting, creating her namesake—a snowflake.

She'd been working on the snowflake for close to an hour, painstakingly creating the perfect details, making sure it was all symmetrical, when she felt the first drops of water. Glancing up, she noticed, for the first time, the angry gray storm clouds. She scrambled to her feet, hastily closing the box, and stuffed it in her bag before running to make it back to her house before it started pouring. She didn't notice that she dropped the snowflake, and she didn't see the cement mixer transform into a large robot and carefully pick up her lost creation before turning to stare after her with dark red optics.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers, just my OC, and I am not making any sort of profit whatsoever from this, except the enjoyment I get out of writing and getting favs, reviews, and story alerts.

**_Thank you all so much for reading this. I hope I don't let everyone down. This chapter is basically just a bit of background on Snowflake's life._**

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><p><strong><strong>Snowflake was, in nature, a very tactile person. For anyone else, it wouldn't have been a problem, but she was isolated from her peers and foster parents physically and mentally, and pleasant contact with other people was just as rare as seeing someone ride a goat in the thick of downtown traffic.

To escape her miserable every day existence, she'd create paper snowflakes. There was something comforting in the snip of the scissors and the way the paper felt, and the moment when she unfolded the paper to reveal a work of art made her heart pound in excitement. When she looked at the finished design, she felt a rush of satisfaction and contentment that nothing else could bring her.

She kept her snowflakes, paper, and scissors in an antique box that one of her ancestors, a Greek craftsman, had made some hundreds of years ago. Her mother had given it to her, and it was now her most prized possession, as well as being a family heirloom. It had been made with great care, and although the wood had been rubbed smooth and some of the gold leaf and paint worn away from the carvings, it was still as beautiful as it had been when it was made. That heirloom was the one thing she kept with her all the time, either in her well-padded knapsack when she went out, or below a loose floorboard under her bed when she was at the house.

The carvings were a mix of Greek, Roman, Egyptian, and Arabic designs, and featured the figures of some of her ancestors. The main figures were those of two lovers, a simple Greek potter and the daughter of a rich Egyptian merchant, who had been forbidden to meet by their families. As the story went, they fled the city and married, only to have soldiers chase and kill the potter and drag the woman back to her family. She died soon after giving birth to their son, who grew to become a craftsman like his father. He was the one to carve the box Snowflake treasured, as a way to remember his parents.

Snowflake loved the story, and when her mother was alive, she'd demanded it be told every night before she went to bed.

Now, as she sat on her bed, carefully cutting out a paper snowflake, she made a wish that she, too, would find someone to love like that—without the tragedy. Or any kind of love, really.

And then she heard the door slam. Her head shot up as angry voices came from downstairs, and she realized, with an ever increasing sense of dread, that her foster parents were back.


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own Transformers, just my OC, and I am not making any sort of profit whatsoever from this, except the enjoyment I get out of writing and getting favs, reviews, and story alerts.

**_Thank you all so much for reading this. I hope I don't let everyone down with this chapter . . . I know it's really short.  
><em>**

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><p><em>Previously:<em>

_Her head shot up as angry voices came from downstairs, and she realized, with an ever increasing sense of dread, that her foster parents were back._

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><p>"Girl, where are you?"<p>

Quickly, she hid her box and hurried down the stairs. "I'm here. Do you need something?"

The next instant, she was yanked off her feet, a hand wrapped around her throat.

"Need something? You useless piece of trash!" Snowflake gritted her teeth as she was violently slammed against the wall. "Do you think you can just sit around doing nothing while we're gone? Look at that! _Look at that!_" Her foster-father forced her face down on the floor next to a muddy splotch on the floor-mud that he'd just tracked in. "You got mud all over the floors! Who's gonna clean that up, huh?"

Even though she knew it wasn't her fault, she still had to say it. "I'm sorry."

"Sorry? _Sorry?_" This time it was her foster-mother screeching. "Sorry won't pay the bills! Do you know how much trouble we have to go through to take care of you? And you can't even keep the house clean? You're worthless! This is why no one will ever love you!"

"Now clean this up and get out of our sight." Her foster-father tossed her to the side. "I don't want to hear another word from you until morning."

"Ye-yes sir." She whispered, cradling her aching stomach as they left to go their seperate ways-apparently they'd had a massive arguement before coming home to beat on her, because Kain, her foster-father, went to the den with a beer, and Lisa, her foster-mother, stormed into their bedroom and slammed the door shut. She waited a few seconds before crawling over to the cupboard to get a rag, and as she did so, she wondered, _What do wrong? I can't stand this for much longer . . . tonight they went easy on me but tomorrow . . . Someone, please . . . save me._

Outside, parked on the street half a block down, a seemingly driver-less cement mixer* came to life, engine roaring as it pulled away from the curb.

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><p><em>*I will probably switch between calling it a cement mixer and a concrete mixer. Both are the same thing, just different ways of putting it. Sorry if gets a little annoying.<em>

_The next chapter should be longer, I promise. I'm just trying to get past writers block...  
><em>


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